Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T08:41:55.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Counterfactual Definiteness and Local Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Brian Skyrms
Brian Skyrms*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of California at Irvine
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bell's Theorem is proved for locality and conservation formulated in terms of subjunctive conditionals with chance consequents, rather than the usual conditional probability formulation. This brings into sharp focus the minimal counterfactual assumptions needed for Bell's theorem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 43 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

An earlier version of this note was circulated in 1978 and formed part of a lecture, “Randomness and Physical Necessity” delivered at the University of Pittsburgh in January 1979. For helpful comments, I am indebted to Nancy Cartwright, Henry Krips, Abner Shimony, and the referees for this journal. David Malament and Jon Jarrett caused me to improve my formulation of Conservation. Arthur Fine called my attention to Suppes and Zanotti (1976). Bas van Fraassen called my attention to Herbert and Karush (1978). van Fraassen's own discussion of Bell's theorem, which will address some of the concerns of this paper, will appear in a future issue of Synthese.

References

REFERENCES

Bell, J. S. (1964), “On the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen Paradox”, Physics I: 195–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, J. S. (1971), “Introduction to the Hidden Variable Question” in Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, (ed.) d'Espagnat. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clauser, J. F. and Horn, M. A. (1974), “Experimental Consequences of Objective Local Theories”, Physical Review D, 10: 526–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberhard, P. H. (1977), “Bell's Theorem without Hidden Variables”, Il Nuovo Cimento 38, B, 1: 75–79.
Eberhard, P. H. (1978), “Bell's Theorem and the Different Senses of Locality”, Il Nuovo Cimento 46, B, 2: 392–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbert, N. and Karush, J. (1978), “Generalization of Bell's Theorem”, Foundations of Physics 8: 313–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. K. (1975), “Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities”, Philosophical Review 85: 297–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1980), Causal Necessity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Stapp, H. P. (1971), “S-matrix Interpretation of Quantum Theory”, Physical Review D 3: 1303–1320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppes and Zanotti (1976), “On the Determinism of Hidden Variable Theories with Strict Correlation and Conditional Statistical Independence of Observables” in Suppes (ed.) Logic and Probability in Quantum Mechanics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (forthcoming), “The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Foundations of Bell's Inequality Argument”, Synthese.Google Scholar